Pages

Thursday, November 22, 2012

In 1630, the first ripples of the Great Migration brought
small convoys of ships from England
to Massachusetts Bay after ten to twelve arduous
weeks at sea, where they prevailed despite adverse winds and stale and
insect-infested food. These were the Winthop Fleet, named for their governor,
John Winthrop, and they had left families, farms, and inheritance to found a
New Jerusalem and usher in the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

They fought winds and tides to sail south along the islands and
shoals of Maine to Cape Ann, to find the
Endecott party at Salem,
who had sailed there in 1628-29 and were supposed to have built houses and
planted crops for the 1630 emigrants. But what the Winthrop Fleet, who were
hungry and sick, found when they reached Salem,
was a village of miserable huts, its residents politely but alarmingly asking
if the new arrivals had any food to share. Half the Endecott party were dead or
dying, and now the Winthrop
party began to die of fevers or scurvy. When they arrived in early July, it was
too late to plow and plant for the autumn which came in August and the winter
which would come in early October. The fleet staggered into harbor between late
June and mid-August. Winthrop’s second son,
Henry, had drowned in a river almost immediately upon arriving in Massachusetts in early
July.

When a ship arrived safely at Cape Ann,
John Winthrop wrote in his journal on Thursday, August 8, 1630, “We kept a day
of thanksgiving in all the
plantations.”

On thanksgiving days, non-essential work and commerce was
prohibited, and families and servants were required to attend church services
for hours. It was a day for solemn, agonizing prayer and soul-searching to
discover hidden sin and confess it, so that God’s wrath would be appeased and
he would not withhold his blessing from his recalcitrant children.

Thanksgiving was not a feast day. It was a fast day. Thanksgiving
was a day of sorrow, to repent, to turn away from a sinful, rebellious life and
return to God’s grace. It wasn’t enough for an individual person to repent—they
were the Church, the body of Christ, and repentance and atonement were
important for the entire community. They didn’t conceive of “rugged American
individualism” at this time. They were wed to Christ and one another. Unmarried
people were not permitted to live alone—they were placed in families.
Wilderness pioneers were up to no good. In Plymouth Colony, a family tried to build
a farm out in the woods by themselves, but were brought back by court order to
live in community for the good of all. There would have been feast days, too, for celebrating weddings and births, and harvests. But because they weren't connected to the historical events that you'll see below, they didn't make it into John Winthrop's historical journal.

In 1630, the majority of the Winthrop Fleet arrivals stayed
in Massachusetts, though they couldn’t be
supported in Salem
as hoped: they needed fresh water. They scouted on foot, and planted the Dudley
group at Charlestown, and the Winthrop
group nearby at Boston.
Some of the intended colonists returned to England,
but the passengers faced piracy, broken masts, and even greater privation on
the way back to “Babylon,”
which was experiencing another wave of bubonic plague.

The ones who stayed in America lived in dugout shelters,
tents, and cabins that resembled stables—and this was during the Little Ice Age,
when they experienced severe winters with frozen bays. They had few stored provisions,
no grain, no vegetables or fruit. The Plymouth colony (the
Pilgrims) helped as they could, and the few Indians who hadn’t moved to their
winter camps traded bits of Indian corn and venison, and dried fish. This
season was the Starving Time.

On the 11th of February 1631, when “great drifts
of ice” floated in Boston Harbor, a sentry spotted the Lyon, one of the ships of the Massachusetts Bay Company, lying at
anchor nearby. The ship’s master had rushed home to England, filled up with
foodstuffs, and sailed back across the dangerous North Atlantic in winter
(almost unheard-of because of the severity of storms), to relieve the suffering
at the Bay.

John Winthrop wrote: “The poorer sort of people (who lay
long in tents, etc.) were much afflicted with the scurvy, and many died,
especially at Boston and Charlestown; but when this ship came and brought store
of juice of lemons, many recovered speedily. It hath been always observed here,
that such as fell into discontent, and lingered after their former conditions
in England,
fell into the scurvy and died.”

In other words, those who regretted leaving the comforts of Babylon for the
privations of New Jerusalem, were more prone to disease and death. Scurvy is a wasting disease
caused by lack of Vitamin C.

Winthrop’s
Journal, Feb. 22, 1631: “We held a day of
thanksgiving for this ship's arrival, by order from the governor and
council, directed to all the plantations.”

On Nov. 2, 1631, the Lyon
arrived again with important people, including the Winthrop family, Rev. John Wilson (who would
baptize the Dyers’ son Samuel in 1635 and revile Mary Dyer at her execution), Isaac
Robinson (son of the Pilgrim pastor, Rev. John Robinson), etc., and food to
last them the winter. On Nov. 11, Boston held a day of thanksgiving.

Many times throughout the 1630s and 1640s, Winthrop wrote of holding fast days and
thanksgivings. Ironically, when famine and disease came upon the Bostonians,
the governor, magistrates, and ministers would call a fast day to confess the
sins they and their neighbors must have committed to deserve all the disasters
which befell them.

Thursdays were the days when people were required to attend
church services for teaching, and when courts would schedule the punishment of
sex offenders, thieves, and (ahem) church members who neglected regular attendance,
with time in the stocks and/or public whipping. Mary Dyer’s first execution
date, October 27, 1659, was a Thursday. Her two Quaker friends were hanged; she
was reprieved. Then the people who had come to town for the “festival” went to
church, no doubt to hear sermons and lectures related to the just judgments of
God and the courts. Days of thanksgiving, called “public days,” were also set
for Thursdays.

In 1636 and 1637, Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth Colonies
had fought the Pequot War, which was less war than genocide and enslavement of
a Connecticut
tribe of Native Americans. Hundreds of Pequots were slaughtered and burned, and
Plymouth’s
governor, William Bradford, wrote this of one of the Indian villages :

“It was a fearful sight to see them
thus frying in the fire and the streams of blood quenching the same, and
horrible was the stink and scent thereof; but the victory seemed a sweet
sacrifice, and they gave the praise thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully
for them, thus to enclose their enemies in their hands and give them so speedy
a victory over so proud and insulting an enemy.”

So, back in Boston,
the theocratic council set June 15, 1637, as “a day of thanksgiving kept in all the churches for the victory
obtained against the Pequods, and for other mercies.”

The DYER books make great gifts!

Followers

About Me

Christy is an author and editor whose biographical novels and nonfiction book on William and Mary Dyer were published in 2013 and 2014. Her hardcover book "We Shall Be Changed" (2010 Review & Herald) is also available. In September 2015 she published "Effigy Hunter," a nonfiction history and travel guide, and will follow that with a nonfiction book on Anne Hutchinson, then a historical novel set in England in the 1640s-1660s.